When I decided to become a therapist, George Costanza did not cross my mind in any way. For some reason I just didn’t picture him factoring into the equation... at all? I certainly did not expect to be mentioning him at least once a week in my practice.
And yet, I find myself name-dropping him on a regular basis with my couples and my individuals, and that’s because of The Constanza Principle. For those who are not fans of the show or who have forgotten, George, in a rut of things not going his way, decides to try a radical experiment: if all of his instincts are wrong, then doing the opposite must necessarily be right.
Neural Pathways and Neuroplasticity
What are neural pathways? For our purposes, you can think of them as an atlas in your brain - a collection of connections, habits, and behaviors that get reinforced through repeated instances of those specific connections, habits, and behaviors. We have tons of neural pathways, and some of them don’t serve us anymore. Some habits may have formed when we were in totally different circumstances (like childhood, or a particular relationship) but remain long after the circumstances have changed. Some of our neural pathways are so strong that they can lead us to be unable to imagine any other way of being, even as we know we are suffering in our current habits.
In our relationships, we can form new neural pathways together, and sometimes our conflict or ruptured trust in our relationships can lead us into a repeating cycle of similar arguments and similar habits and ways of regarding our partners. Our past experiences from before the relationship can also impact how we show up with our partners from the get-go, and can shape our habits, preferences, and tendencies when we are in love or in disillusionment with our partners. Relational hurt can be devastating, and our nervous systems can become finely tuned to protect us against being hurt in that way again. Sometimes that can impact the choices we make and lead us to project onto our partners, leading to further emotional rupture and unneeded suffering.
Luckily, your brain isn’t static. Your brain has the quality of neuroplasticity, which means that your brain can change, and you can develop new neural pathways. The trick is first knowing that this is possible and then developing the mindfulness skills to begin to observe and compassionately recognize your habits, biases, and tendencies. Then, you take the awkward step of choosing something else - and if you aren’t sure what it is, then you can always just try the opposite. This is what the Costanza Principle illustrates so elegantly and simply, and why it’s so helpful as a shorthand for us as we are working to grow and understand our own sense of agency in shaping our lives.
Humor as Pruning Shears
It can be awkward to do something new. Even if it will ultimately serve you in the long run, it likely isn’t going to immediately feel good. Sometimes the behavior has to precede the emotion or the payoff - because remember, you’re basically forming a brand new path in an overgrown stretch of forest in your mind. You won’t get to a nice, tidy, well-trafficked path immediately. You have to keep treading that ground again and again until the path can begin to maintain itself, and it becomes more automatic to choose it. You also have to remember that, as you forge a new path, your old neural pathways are already very tidy and well-trafficked. It’s physically and cognitively easier to travel down the old path, even if the old path is one of suffering.
So - something new is bound to feel awkward. It’s unfamiliar, and you aren’t sure what the results might be, or if it will pay off at all. You are responding differently to things in your life, which may surprise others and might surprise you. The feedback you’re receiving is necessarily going to change because you’re changing your response - and even if the feedback is positive, it can still feel awkward and unwieldy, or even a little embarrassing or vulnerable.
Again, this is an area where George Costanza can be a teacher for us. My partner has told me that, at times when things aren’t going his way, he will sometimes pretend he’s in a Seinfeld episode, and I think that’s brilliant - it helps him to laugh at himself and at the situation he’s in, brings some helpful perspective, and also helps him to formulate a narrative about what’s happening in a way that has some lightheartedness and humor about it. It helps him to connect afterward with people he trusts and process what happened with levity - and being able to do that is forging a new neural pathway in and of itself.
There is a misconception that humor is completely contradictory to the work of therapy. In reality, it can be an absolutely essential and underrated tool on our path of growth and development. Humor is part of joy, and a part of silliness, which is part of play. Play is part of how we as humans learn, and an important part of our resilience - if we can laugh at ourselves, it’s a little safer to be silly, and that makes it a little safer to be playful, and that is where so much growth, learning, and development occur. Humor also helps us connect to our vital source of creativity, experimentation, and innovation. More than all that, it can help encourage others around us to also be silly and playful, which can help build us a bridge in our relationships to change our patterns together. All of this is deeply healthy - why would we exile it from the therapy room? Instead, we can use humor and play as a machete or pruning shears to help us start to frame that new pathway in our brains.
Sometimes, forging a new path through the woods requires us to pretend to be someone else, just for a little while. Why not let it be George?